I am a 35 year practicing engineer and work with permutations of these laws daily. I?m glad they are there or I couldn?t do my job!!

1. The second law of thermodynamics and the law of entropy preclude creation without a creator.2. The laws of probability preclude even one simple protein strand from assembling itself (if 1/10^50 is commonly accepted as the level of absolute impossibility, the odds of a single very small protein assembling itself is in the range of 1/10^150), let alone complex proteins or a DNA chain.3. The law of irreducible complexity precludes gradual evolution of innumerable living constructions.4. The law of information is absolute proof of intelligent design. These learned men would scoff at anyone claiming the Encyclopedia Britannica (do they still sell those door-to-door or even publish it any longer or is it all on the web now?) spontaneously assembled itself. However they have no problem believing a strand of DNA, a compilation of precise information that makes the Britannica look like a Dr. Seuss book, just decided to come together one day.

I am a 35 year practicing engineer and work with permutations of these laws daily. I?m glad they are there or I couldn?t do my job!!

1. The second law of thermodynamics and the law of entropy preclude creation without a creator.2. The laws of probability preclude even one simple protein strand from assembling itself (if 1/10^50 is commonly accepted as the level of absolute impossibility, the odds of a single very small protein assembling itself is in the range of 1/10^150), let alone complex proteins or a DNA chain.3. The law of irreducible complexity precludes gradual evolution of innumerable living constructions.4. The law of information is absolute proof of intelligent design. These learned men would scoff at anyone claiming the Encyclopedia Britannica (do they still sell those door-to-door or even publish it any longer or is it all on the web now?) spontaneously assembled itself. However they have no problem believing a strand of DNA, a compilation of precise information that makes the Britannica look like a Dr. Seuss book, just decided to come together one day.

Please, please don't 'engineer' anything that the public might use..

From his ramblings, it looks like he is perfectly suited to design bridges like the 35W in MN.

Although I have to admit, at least he didn't bring a banana to his argument...

--------------Come on Tough Guy, do the little dance of ID impotence you do so well. - Louis to Joe G 2/10

Gullibility is not a virtue - Quidam on Dembski's belief in the Bible Code Faith Healers & ID 7/08

One wonders why Ben Stein has such concern over IDC advocates variously underwhelming tenure review committees with a whole lot of didn't do squat since hired, trying to force people to like them despite playing shady politics with peer review, or telling students that "There really is not a lot of evidence for evolution," while ignoring the general expulsion of scientific views from the current administration. Whether the issue is public health (epidemiology of AIDS, "abstinence only" sex education, etc.), environmental issues (gutting the Endangered Species Act), or climate change (telling scientists what their results are or just to shut up), these things are manifestly happening and are causing actual damage.

Where's the "Expelled" project for exposing the right's war on science?

Where's the "Expelled" project for exposing the right's war on science?

I'm sure there's an independent film out there somewhere that deals with the results of two Bush White House terms on the federal science agenda. I've been seeing things like this showing up on a cable channel, possibly sundance. There was one on the Patriot Act, there was one on the history of Karl Rove.. I can't recall seeing one specifically about science, but I suspect it's out there.

Truth be told, if anything I think the fundies are behind in the propaganda film business. Perhaps the bible colleges need to start adding art courses. They could start up their own independent movie circuit, I'd suggest somewhere in Florida as a good first venue. Call it something like the Independent Thought Festival, where, of course, every movie would say exactly the same thing, rehashing the same arguments that were debunked decades ago. It could be a whole new thing for them, supplementing the tedious pseudo-textbooks and occasional lawsuit fiasco.

I suspect Rupert Murdoch might be up for sponsoring something like that.

While there is no tangible evidence for a living God, it is unthinkable that one would even dream of denying a past presence for one or more such entities. Yet that is exactly what such compulsive atheists as P.Z. Myers, Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins continue so arrogantly to proclaim. Several months ago I managed to introduce on RichardDawkins.net forum the following thread for discussion - God or Gods are dead but must have once existed. During about a week it attracted over 60,000 views after which I was summarily terminated along with my viewing rights to his forum. I achieved a similar honor at ARN and have been banned from all the major forums with the exception of ISCID's brainstorms where I am still allowed to hold forth. While I am a Creationist, I have rejected both the Darwinian and the Christian Fundamentalist camps, which apparently is the primary reason I am anathema to both. I welcome any comments at ?brainstorms, here, or anywhere else. I will probably not respond to anonymous posters. A person who cannot put his name to his words is a coward. The internet teems with such. It should never have been permitted.A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.John A. Davison

(my boldfacing)

I do wish VMartin (of course his real full name) would tell us whether he agrees that God is dead and that 'there is no tangible evidence for a living God'.

--------------"Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus

D. James Kennedy (the link Sal provides) is one of the sleaziest, most dangerous figures of the American religious right. He's not as famous as, say, James Dobson, but his show is viewed by many millions every week, and he knows a lot of DC insiders. (He's been sidelined with a heart attack for some months, but his show goes on.)

--------------"I am not currently proving that objective morality is true. I did that a long time ago and you missed it." -- StephenB

Producer Mark Mathis apparently doesn't have the time to write a real reply to someone interviewed for the movie (PZ) or to Richard Dawkins, apparently.

--------------To rebut creationism you pretty much have to be a biologist, chemist, geologist, philosopher, lawyer and historian all rolled into one. While to advocate creationism, you just have to be an idiot. -- tommorris

Is anybody saving that thread anywhere? Certainly by any scientific and philosophical sense, Ben is being slaughtered, while creos and IDiots merely parrot their long-destroyed claims, or far more commonly, whine that we point out their deficiencies in intellect and argumentation.

They're doing a good job at not censoring the discussion at this moment, but I can see how it all might conveniently disappear at some point in the future.

Wesley suggested on one blog that we archive our posts on Ben Stein's blog here. ?Because I don't trust it all to disappear some time in future, I'm going to take him up on it. ?The last post hadn't been approved at the time I copied it to here:

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Glen Davidson Says:

August 24th, 2007 at 12:32 pm Perhaps the most telling reason why ID is not only useless but wrong, is that the evolutionary patterns among the eukaryotes are substantially different from those in the prokaryotes. Notably, we see the appearance much horizontal transfer among the asexual (but conjugating) bacteria and archaea, and almost solely vertical transfer among the sexual (it appears that all asexual eukaryotes had sexual progenitors) eukaryotes, regardless of what level of evolution is considered.

If the Grand Designer were in fact designing through evolution, why does it choose to produce the patterns expected from the differing mechanisms among eukaryotes and prokaryotes? Why virtually no horizontal transfers in the vertebrate lineage, why a difficult-to-sort out pattern of evolution in prokaryotes, due to their rampant promiscuity?

It looks as though known mechanisms might be responsible for the evolution of eukaryotes and the evolution of prokaryotes. It takes quite a designer to so carefully design evolution just as if it were the known and established mechanisms were operating over the course of earth?s history.

That?s what we?re ?censoring,? of course, a ?theory? that has utterly failed to explain anything at all, only claiming that the predictions of modern evolutionary theory ?can fit? with the lack of predictions about their ?designer?. Of course it can, because the IDists haven?t said anything substantial at all.

Why not simply resort to Last Thursdayism or Omphalos creationism? It?s the same reasoning, that all of the predictions of science are meaningless because an undefined and unconstrained designer could make it all look like it?s old, and that Darwinian mechanisms have operated in organisms through all time.

Glen D[URL=http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7

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Glen Davidson Says:

August 24th, 2007 at 1:16 pm I commend Ben Stein for running a blog which allows all comments, presumably within certain reasonable rules of dialog. We?re really not used to this from pro-ID spokespersons.

And I do hope that Ben interviewed Dembski, whose own blog is the opposite of open, having expelled nearly all critics of ID. Indeed, this was done recently in the discussions about this movie on Uncommon Descent, Bill Dembski?s blog. See Dembski expel the inconvenient critic here:

You have to scroll up to see what ?Rocket? had said that ?merited? this censorship.

Meanwhile, Panda?s Thumb and Pharyngula remain open to virtually all comments, except for the truly trollish ones. It is rare that Paul Nelson and Sal Cordova avail themselves (the rest of the DI tribe do not at all, even if Dembski did in the past) of such openness, generally preferring (or so I have to assume) the secret conversations held by highly restricted net groups. I only know about these latter because a former member of one, David Heddle, tired of the limits of discussion enforced by that group, and complained publicly as he was ousted for disagreeing with them. Heddle?s a good source to look up on the web as a critic of ID censorship, who still sympathizes with cosmological ID (probably biological as well, but he doesn?t discuss it much, if ever).

Okay, so forums are open to the IDists, they just don?t use them much. Forums are closed to us (Dembski?s blog kicks us off piecemeal), so that ID doesn?t have to face sound criticisms.

Any chance that Stein will cover these important details, if not in the movie, at least in a future blog?

Glen D[URL=http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7

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Glen Davidson Says:

August 29th, 2007 at 11:19 am Again, were Ben concerned over the real freedom issue, he?d be skewering IDists for censoring so many of their blogs. Dembski?s blog is well-known to be censored, and I linked to an example of this in #395.

ARN is the only ID forum I know about which is relatively uncensored. But, as any pro-science poster there knows, writing of the intellectual dishonesty of the IDists who post there is often censored, even though that?s the only remaining issue at stake once all of the ID ?arguments? have been properly answered (and I don?t go there any more because of it).

One of the potentially best places for ID to be discussed, at Behe?s forum on Amazon, has had the comments disabled. Anyone can see this here (at least at the time of this posting):

Gee, you?d think that the ?censored IDists? would jump at the chance to provide all of the ?censored evidence? which supposedly is ?prohibited? by the big bad anti-religionists (you know, including the 40% or so of scientists who are religious). But no, Behe hides behind a wall that keeps out all of the questions that he can?t answer (like why the Designer made yet another prediction of evolution come true, malarial parasites doing what evolved organisms do, taking energy and matter in any manner possible, but being limited to derived and modified components to do so), the requests for evidence that he can?t supply.

Indeed, there is a lack of openness and freedom which is worth investigating. It?s being caused by the IDists, who have never been able to compete in a the legitimate evidence-driven discourse of science.

Glen D[URL=http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7

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Glen Davidson Says:

August 29th, 2007 at 3:21 pm I?ve got some waiting time right now, so I figure why not go through most of Ben?s ?points??

?I?m glad you found this site, because I want to share with you my thoughts from time to time here about a subject that is very near and dear to me: freedom.?

Yes, freedom, the right to do meaningful science, and to be tried according to the evidence, not according to religious notions which fail empirical tests.

?EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed is a controversial, soon-to-be-released documentary that chronicles my confrontation with the widespread suppression and entrenched discrimination that is spreading in our institutions, laboratories and most importantly, in our classrooms, and that is doing irreparable harm to some of the world?s top scientists, educators, and thinkers.?

I fail to recognize, say, Behe and Dembski as top scientists or thinkers. And indeed, science is open to all, religious and irreligious alike, unlike ID which cannot be done by people who rely only upon empirical evidence.

What is more, the idea that anything is changing is utterly unsupported by any evidence. As far as can be determined, we?re operating according to the same rules utilized by Newton and by Einstein, such as Newton?s ?Rules for Reasoning in Philosophy? (which is what he called his science):

?RULE I.We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.

To this purpose the philosophers say that Nature does nothing in vain, and more is in vain when less will serve; for Nature is pleased with simplicity, and affects not the pomp of superfluous causes.

RULE II.Therefore to the same natural effects we must, as far as possible, assign the same causes.

As to respiration in a man and in a beast; the descent of stones in Europe and in America; the light of our culinary fire and of the sun; the reflection of light in the earth, and in the planets.

RULE III.The qualities of bodies, which admit neither intension nor remission of degrees, and which are found to belong to all bodies within the reach of our experiments, are to be esteemed the universal qualities of all bodies whatsoever.

For since the qualities of bodies are only known to us by experiments, we are to hold for universal all such as universally agree with experiments; and such as are not liable to diminution can never be quite taken away. We are certainly not to relinquish the evidence of experiments for the sake of dreams and vain fictions of our own devising; nor are we to recede from the analogy of Nature, which uses to be simple, and always consonant to itself. We no other way know the extension of bodies than by our senses, nor do these reach it in all bodies; but because we perceive extension in all that are sensible, therefore we ascribe it universally to all others also. That abundance of bodies are hard, we learn by experience; and because the hardness of the whole arises from the hardness of the parts, we therefore justly infer the hardness of the undivided particles not only of the bodies we feel but of all others. That all bodies are impenetrable, we gather not from reason, but from sensation. The bodies which we handle we find impenetrable, and thence conclude impenetrability to be an universal property of all bodies whatsoever. That all bodies are moveable, and endowed with certain powers (which we call the vires inerti?) of persevering in their motion, or in their rest we only infer from the like properties observed in the bodies which we have seen. The extension, hardness, impenetrability, mobility, and vis inerti? of the whole, result from the extension hardness, impenetrability, mobility, and vires inerti? of the parts; and thence we conclude the least particles of all bodies to be also all extended, and hard and impenetrable, and moveable, and endowed with their proper vires inerti?. And this is the foundation of all philosophy. Moreover, that the divided but contiguous particles of bodies may be separated from one another, is matter of observation; and, in the particles that remain undivided, our minds are able to distinguish yet lesser parts, as is mathematically demonstrated. But whether the parts so distinguished, and not yet divided, may, by the powers of Nature, be actually divided and separated from one another, we cannot certainly determine. Yet, had we the proof of but one experiment that any undivided particle, in breaking a hard and solid body, offered a division, we might by virtue of this rule conclude that the undivided as well as the divided particles may be divided and actually separated to infinity.

Lastly, if it universally appears, by experiments and astronomical observations, that all bodies about the earth gravitate towards the earth, and that in proportion to the quantity of matter which they severally contain, that the moon likewise, according to the quantity of its matter, gravitates towards the earth; that, on the other hand, our sea gravitates towards the moon; and all the planets mutually one towards another; and the comets in like manner towards the sun; we must, in consequence of this rule, universally allow that all bodies whatsoever are endowed with a principle of mutual gravitation. For the argument from the appearances concludes with more force for the universal gravitation of all bodies that for their impenetrability; of which, among those in the celestial regions, we have no experiments, nor any manner of observation. Not that I affirm gravity to be essential to bodies: by their vis insita I mean nothing but their vis inerti?. This is immutable. Their gravity is diminished as they recede from the earth.

RULE IV.In experimental philosophy we are to look upon propositions collected by general induction from ph?nomena as accurately or very nearly true, notwithstanding any contrary hypotheses that may be imagined, till such time as other ph?nomena occur, by which they may either be made more accurate, or liable to exceptions.

This rule we must follow, that the argument of induction may not be evaded by hypotheses.

Tell me how we deviate from those rules, then I might start listening to your complaints.

?Freedom is not conferred by the state: as our founders said, and as Martin Luther King repeated, freedom is God-given.?

I?ll take that as metaphorically true. As such, why would anyone wish to take away our freedom by imposing ID into education and science, when it cannot withstand the scrutiny of science?

?A huge part of this freedom is freedom of inquiry.?

Absolutely, and Galileo was persecuted for inquiry. IDists wish also to impose a ?science? which cannot be engaged in by impassionate seekers of empirical knowledge.

?Freedom of inquiry is basic to human advancement. There would be no modern medicine?

Right, and modern medicine has been predicated in part in evolutionary theory, in order to interpret results from animal experiments, and to tweak medicines and trials for humans. IDists threaten modern medicine, particularly as it is increasingly reliant upon comparisons of our genome with the genomes of related organisms (and the only sensible interpretation is that undirected evolution is responsible for changes in genomes).

?no antibiotics?

Quite. Antibiotics work against bacteria and are relatively harmless to humans and related organisms. This fits in with the predictions of non-teleological evolution, while ID has no basis for any sort of predictions, not as formulated by present IDists (though they claim to predict function for junk DNA, while contradictorily claiming that vestigial organs fit in with ID?vestigial organs essentially are the result of a kind of junk DNA).

Oh, so science has been good to us. Then why bring unevidenced charges against it, as you do?

?no knowledge of the human body without freedom of inquiry.?

Absolutely. Science has had great success, while ID tells us that we ought to resort to pre-scientific assumptions which have never proved their worth.

?This includes the ability to inquire whether a higher power, a being greater than man, is involved with how the universe operates.?

Completely allowed. ?Naturalism? is only a convenience for theists, who wished to put their God beyond the realm of observation. Science itself cannot exclude God from possible inquiry, it?s just that nobody has ever found a way to observe God or God?s doings in the cosmos.

?This has always been basic to science. ALWAYS.?

OK, then what?s your complaint?

?Some of the greatest scientists of all time, including Galileo, Newton, Einstein, operated under the hypothesis that their work was to understand the principles and phenomena as designed by a creator.?

True for Galileo and Newton, not true of Einstein. Einstein?s ?God? was at most ?Deus sive Natura,? Spinoza?s conflation of nature and divinity which could never propose a ?designer God? or any such epistemological horror.

?Operating under that hypothesis, they discovered the most important laws of motion, gravity, thermodynamics, relativity, and even economics.?

Good grief, you really don?t know anything about them, do you? Thermodynamics was developed by other people, especially by Lord Kelvin (another theist, btw). And none of us fault Newton, Galileo, Einstein, Lord Kelvin (though Kelvin?s theology interfered with certain of his claims), for they did exactly the kind of science that modern scientists do today. Indeed, anyone who reads Darwin may recognize how he is trying to bring biology into the same sort of scientific regime in which Newton operated, the cause-and-effect analysis of the data.

?Now, I am sorry to say, freedom of inquiry in science is being suppressed.?

You should be sorry to say it, because it isn?t true. IDists mean to suppress inquiry, but so far have been thwarted in their attempts.

?Under a new anti-religious dogmatism, scientists and educators are not allowed to even think thoughts that involve an intelligent creator.?

No evidence or argumentation is brought forth to back up this banal claim. Indeed, Nature wrote an editorial praising Francis Collins? efforts to bridge the science/religion divide, which they suppose he is able to do precisely because he finds science to be compatible with God and Xianity (if hardly all forms of Xianity).

?Do you realize that some of the leading lights of ?anti-intelligent design? would not allow a scientist who merely believed in the possibility of an intelligent designer/creator to work for him? EVEN IF HE NEVER MENTIONED the possibility of intelligent design in the universe??

No, I didn?t know that, though it could be true. Even if it is true, it hardly backs up your charges against science as a whole.

?EVEN FOR HIS VERY THOUGHTS? HE WOULD BE BANNED.?

What do you mean ?banned?? I?m sure that all kinds of factors prevent scientists from working together, many much more trivial than religion. It hardly troubles me that some scientists would not like working with certain theists, nor that certain theists would not like working with certain atheists (PZ comes to mind as a possibility).

?In today?s world, at least in America, an Einstein or a Newton or a Galileo would probably not be allowed to receive grants to study or to publish his research.?

There is almost certainly no reason to think that today?s America differs substantially from the one that welcomed Einstein with open arms rather than sending him back to Nazi Germany. Einstein would be showered with grants and opportunities, were he alive today, and I?ll bet that even you know it.

Newton could run into trouble if he espoused alchemy, a pseudoscience like ID (though almost certainly more scientific than the latter, able to give rise to aspects of chemistry). That said, Newton could almost certainly be more open about his religious ideas than he was able to be in England in the 17th century.

And it?s laughable to see the religion-persecuted Galileo brought up by the pro-pseudoscience spokespeople as if he?d be troubled by the scientists of today. Galileo is substantially responsible for modern science, something that Heidegger points out with some disapproval (why don?t we try to force Heidegger?s perspective into the sciences along with ID? At least it?s not the result of religious dogma, no matter that it?s still tendentious nonsense).

?They cannot even mention the possibility that?as Newton or Galileo believed?these laws were created by God or a higher being.?

Of course they can, and some do. It behooves Stein to learn a little bit about science and how it is done.

?They could get fired, lose tenure, have their grants cut off.?

Unlikely, though I suppose it?s within the realm of possibilities (there are the prejudiced and the idiotic in science, just as anywhere).

?This can happen.?

Anything can happen. It remains for IDists to bring up evidence for any of their claims, for they haven?t produced sufficient evidence for their non-trivial charges and claims thus far.

?It has happened.?

I?d like to see the evidence. Not Sternberg, who appears to have shepherded junk science through the process meant to weed it out.

?EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed comes to theaters near you in February 2008. To learn more, check out my blog here often ? and explore the rest of our site for new developments, or to volunteer to help spread the word.?

You have not made a compelling case for anyone to ?learn? anything else from you. Just a bunch of claims made without evidence, claims that have been exhaustively answered on science blogs like Pharyngula and Panda?s Thumb, while the ID blogs remain mostly impervious to open discussion.

Glen D[URL=http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7

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Glen Davidson Says:

August 29th, 2007 at 3:27 pm I?m still waiting for the ?censored evidence? that could answer the post I made a few days back. Here it again is for all of those who are just waiting to provide the evidence of ID:

?Glen Davidson Says:

August 24th, 2007 at 12:32 pmPerhaps the most telling reason why ID is not only useless but wrong, is that the evolutionary patterns among the eukaryotes are substantially different from those in the prokaryotes. Notably, we see the appearance much horizontal transfer among the asexual (but conjugating) bacteria and archaea, and almost solely vertical transfer among the sexual (it appears that all asexual eukaryotes had sexual progenitors) eukaryotes, regardless of what level of evolution is considered.

If the Grand Designer were in fact designing through evolution, why does it choose to produce the patterns expected from the differing mechanisms among eukaryotes and prokaryotes? Why virtually no horizontal transfers in the vertebrate lineage, why a difficult-to-sort out pattern of evolution in prokaryotes, due to their rampant promiscuity?

It looks as though known mechanisms might be responsible for the evolution of eukaryotes and the evolution of prokaryotes. It takes quite a designer to so carefully design evolution just as if it were the known and established mechanisms were operating over the course of earth?s history.

That?s what we?re ?censoring,? of course, a ?theory? that has utterly failed to explain anything at all, only claiming that the predictions of modern evolutionary theory ?can fit? with the lack of predictions about their ?designer?. Of course it can, because the IDists haven?t said anything substantial at all.

Why not simply resort to Last Thursdayism or Omphalos creationism? It?s the same reasoning, that all of the predictions of science are meaningless because an undefined and unconstrained designer could make it all look like it?s old, and that Darwinian mechanisms have operated in organisms through all time.

Now come on, on Panda?s Thumb I asked Paul Nelson to provide the answer, and he simply disappeared. I asked here, and all I got was someone who asked me what I actually know about evolution, when that post mentions several things that I know about evolution (I?ve never run into an IDist who could answer my questions forthrightly, which is surely evidence of something). Stein claims that ID is being stifled, when all I can see is a bunch of IDists who can?t answer reasonable questions.

Somehow I expect that nothing has changed in the past few days.

Glen D

And the one not yet posted as of this time:

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Glen Davidson Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.

August 31st, 2007 at 12:51 pm I?d guess the reason Ferris Bueller took the day off is that he?d already learned all that Ben Stein had to teach him: The answer to everything is, ?God did it?.

On the other hand, why wouldn?t Ben be expelled from a good school if the only answer he could give to every question (yes, I know, IDists implausibly accept science outside of biology, but they?re inconsistent when they demand that evidence actually be used to back up charges against them, rather than vague (and typically wrong) analogies) was ?God did it?? There?s actually more to investigation and learning than resorting to Behe?s puff of smoke every time the questions get hard.

September 1st, 2007 at 11:35 pm By the way, I know that the pro-IDists, pro-creationists try to do what every conspiracy-theory monger does, which is to whine pitifully that we label nonsense as nonsense, and to shout ?conspiracy? instead of answering the questions.

It?s very thin gruel, and it won?t wash with anybody who understands what goes into making science. The very fact that such a sad little conspiracy theory is the best Stein and the producers is the best that they can do shows just how badly ID has failed in its stated goal of actually convincing scientists that magic (they didn?t call it magic, true, but they never demonstrated that it was anything else) is science.

Glen D[URL=http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7

Added 9-5-07

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Let's set the scenario. The times have changed, and it is the new improved future when the requirement of evidence for "doing science" and convicting criminals has at last been overturned. ID thus reigns supreme, and the evidence of relatedness means nothing any more.

Now DNA means nothing in the courts. Why should it? God may very well have intervened to make a person's DNA fit with the DNA retrieved from the crime scene, or God may have changed the DNA from the crime scene to fit your DNA. Are you trying to tell me that God couldn't do this? That's exactly what IDists tell the "Darwinists" when the latter point to DNA evidence that agrees with non-teleological evolutionary predictions.

The Bulgarian medical personel are sent back to Lybia to be killed. After all, it required phylogenetic evidence to show that they didn't infect the Lybian children with HIV. And the IDists tell us that God intervenes in evolutionary processes, hence such evidence is worthless, now that ID is no longer "censored" by gov't and educational institutions.

Guys are happier now, because mere DNA evidence indicates nothing to the courts. After all, if apparent DNA relatedness doesn't show that we're related to chimpanzees, why should DNA relatedness tell us anything about paternity? God might have intervened in evolution, and who can tell God that he can't design in a way that makes it appear that the baby is related to one who is not the father?

And I am much happier, now that the computers which disappeared out of the warehouse and appeared in my basement cannot be traced either by serial number, nor to me. Good grief, do you really think that God couldn't have changed the serial numbers, or even if God didn't do that, that God couldn't have rewarded me with the gift of all of those computers? You don't know that they're either the same computers or that I actually took the computers, since God might have intervened (I never really had the computers, you know, it's an example). After all, isn't this the sort of scientific explanation that is being "censored" by the evilutionists?

But I cheated a bit on that last one. How? Because a burglary has all of the marks of design. That is to say, it is not irrational to say that God, the Designer, aliens, or leprachauns might have picked the locks, jammed the burglar alarms, and moved the computers from one place to another. There is no good solid evidence for it, which means that in the ancient and dark past when evidence was required, nobody would believe me that God or space aliens put the computers in my basement. But it isn't actually irrational to say that something that is designed, like a burglary, could have been done by a hypothetical rational agent like God or space aliens.

Biology is different, and was recognized as different at least as far back as Aristotle. Biology was physis to the ancient Greeks, while machines were made by techne. This is why machines are made rationally, with straight lines, foresight, teleology, and according to the numbers, while plants and animals are quite something else, "physis" or nature. Plants and animals do not have a purpose as such, nor are they at all designed as humans would design them, with "poor designs", and by adapting rather unlikely organs to serve new functions, such as taking legs and making wings out of them.

The descent of the testicles is hardly design, it is adaptation from what previously existed, abdominal testicles, and their descent leaves weak spots in the abdominal walls (the doctor says, "now cough"). The primate foveas and bird pectens partially get around the poor "design" of the eye which put blood vessels right in front of the light-sensing retinas, but these are only ways of dealing with inherited problems expected in evolution and easily avoided by intelligent designers.

Back to wings. Think about it: three different types of vertebrates evolved wings, and none of the earlier wings were used in order to make the later wings, nor were any designed from scratch. Now the best designs would be from first principles, but humans might very well take wings from one example and adapt them to fit another purpose (as indeed the Wright brothers did). What a sensible designer would never do would be to take legs and change them in order to make wings out of them. It's just a ridiculous way of designing wings.

Pterosaurs had the first known vertebrate wings. From what were they "designed"? From thecodont legs. What does evolutionary theory predict (in context) would give rise to pterosaur wings? Thecodont legs. By what sort of thinking would anyone expect a designer to make pterosaur wings out of thecodont legs?

The next wings were better, bird wings. So were bird wings an improved version of pterosaur wings? Why no, bird wings were made from dinosaur legs and dinosaur feathers. What would evolutionary theory predict? That bird wings would be made from dinosaur legs, and likely would utilize feathers, since they already existed and produce superb airfoils. What would honest design principles predict? Either wings from first principles, or at least from other wings. Bird wings came from legs, hardly promising material, but the only organs available to evolve into wings.

At least bird wings were an improvement, however odd the route of "design" chosen by this exceeding odd "designer" that the IDists give to us.

Bat wings were a step back, however, because as evolution predicts, they were produced from an unlikely source, mammalian legs and no feathers. The "designer" only copies legs to make vertebrate wings, not copying excellent vertebrate wings as one might expect of an actual thinking entity. Indeed, bats sleep upside down in part because they are not as good fliers as birds are, and can gain airspeed by dropping down from their roosting positions to partly compensate for their poorer flying ability during takeoff.

Then there's the odd fact that design took four billion years or so, around the time expected for non-teleological evolution, rather than the at most a few years expected from known designers. Funny that, everything comes out like non-teleological evolution predicts, and the scientists complain when Behe tells us that we should understand it all to have been designed. The "designer" steps in to produce what non-teleological evolution would produce, but can't according to Behe's numbers? Um, I'm sort of thinking, why?

However, this is Ben's dream world, in which evidence no longer counts for anything. No more "censorship" by the evidence, every notion is the equal of another and should be taught as equals. Don't teach the scientific method in biology, it's unfair to those who prefer theological claims to evidence-based claims. This is the post-modern world of Michel Foucault, where the mere fact that Ben has to use a blog to say what he does, instead of having his theology taught in the schools, now counts as "censorship".

And as so many bleat on this thread, surely the fact that we protest only demonstrates our censorious nature. Yes, fighting to preserve the Enlightenment and the only bases we have for law, justice, science, and technological advancement, only indicates prejudice and bigotry. Sure, but that's just us, we are not schooled in the ways of understanding preconceived theologies as superior to the ideas that gave us democracy and science.

Look at the screen dumps of the questions. In the first, it's cut off at the right. The second is for question 77, and it's not cut off, so we can see most of one of the potential answers. We can also therefore see the current score - 22%.

Bob

--------------It is fun to dip into the various threads to watch cluelessness at work in the hands of the confident exponent. - Soapy Sam (so say we all)

Look at the screen dumps of the questions. In the first, it's cut off at the right. The second is for question 77, and it's not cut off, so we can see most of one of the potential answers. We can also therefore see the current score - 22%.

--------------"Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus

Look at the screen dumps of the questions. In the first, it's cut off at the right. The second is for question 77, and it's not cut off, so we can see most of one of the potential answers. We can also therefore see the current score - 22%.

Just recording my (not posted at this time) response to Luskin on Stein's blog, in case they decide to censor them in the future:

Quote

--Listing some pro-ID Rebuttal links?--

Yes, of course. Why don't you answer the questions, particularly the ones asked of your DI propaganda? You know very well that virtually everything the DI has put out has been answered, usually without the DI addressing the points made by those who responded. Instead we get the same droning nonsense over and over again.

Why don't you answer the questions I raised in post #389 and in #1031? I know why, it's because you have no good answers to them.

I'll link to a few of the responses made to the ID propaganda.

--This is a fascinating and incredibly long discussion, but I?m glad to see the interest that is being sparked by this movie. Some Darwinists try to pretend that ID proponents imagine the discrimination that in many cases has actively harmed their careers,--

Of course we don't deny that unevidenced religious bias presented as "science" isn't largely rejected by academia. What we do deny is that it is anything that shouldn't be done, as astrologists, homeopathists, and alchemists are also rejected (well, usually).

--but I suspect it will be difficult to make such claims with a straight face after this movie comes out.--

Quit changing the subject. The issue is the false claim that ID is being "censored", as Ben claims, which it is so very clearly not, as Casey's list of links shows. That it isn't accepted by academia in lieu of its miserable showings on the evidentiary front, and its attempts to change science so that "it looks designed" counts as evidence, is only to the credit of academia (which is hardly perfect, certainly).

--Thanks to Ben Stein and others behind this movie for being willing to stand up for the persecuted minority:--

We're waiting for evidence of the "persecuted minority". Not that the lack of evidence stops IDists from making outrageous claims.

--they will be viciously attacked for making this movie, as they already are being attacked.--

Yes, we are so mean for calling ID on all of its false claims, and Ben's unsupported charges.

--They should be commended for standing up for those whose voices are often silenced, even if that means they themselves become attacked for making the film.--

Why aren't you standing up for genuinely ignored science, instead of for long-falsified claims, and subsequent non-predictive claims which avoid falsification by denying the obvious predictions which an honest ID theory would make?

--Regarding this thread: internet Darwinists often think that by throwing up links to websites like TalkOrigins that they can win an argument. I?ve surveyed many of the links repeatedly posted on this list by such internet Darwinists and unfortunately there have been few posts to some of the many rebuttals to these arguments.--

They're rebuttals, not actual answers.

--I only have time for one post on this thread, but I?m going to post some pro-ID rebuttals to many of the links Darwinists have posted in this discussion:--

And why didn't you post the rebuttals to the DI's sorry nonsense? You know very well that, quite unlike the charges of "censorship" suggest, that you have been amply answered. And most importantly, your "rebuttals" are largely attacks on "Darwinism", not at all evidence for your theological intrusions into science.

It is not direct, nor comprehensive. It's an attempt to nickel and dime the real predictions of evolution to death, without addressing the real predictions made by evolutionary theory. Unfortunately, the "29 Evidences" could have been written more carefully (for there is no inherent prediction that all life should be related, and for other reasons), however it does get to the gist of evolutionary prediction, while the "response" merely cavils on minor aspects and mistakes by the "29 Evidences" authors. I can hardly respond to the entire piece, but here's an example I picked up at the very beginning:

--Unless one inserts an additional premise imposing a limit on the degree to which descendants can vary (which would require specification of a mechanism of descent), the claim of common ancestry does not require that all of the descendants share one or more traits. There is no logical reason why completely novel organisms could not arise in one or more lineages.--

Of course there is no logical reason why completely novel organisms could not arise in one or more lineages (which would be something like abiogenesis, only of too-complex organisms), it's because of what we've learned about evolutionary mechanisms that insists that this cannot happen. The author is trying to make a point that is entirely specious in the overall theory of evolution, which is based upon many limiting factors. Thus his argument here is entirely bogus, except as a cheap debating tactic.

Here's a really quite good response to some of the above link's many claims, one that I think is really a better source than "29 Evidences" ever was:

Note in particular how it mentions how desert grasses have the same photosynthetic machinery as do grasses in cool moist areas do, NOT the better photosynthetic mechanisms of cacti. One would predict this from known evolutionary mechanisms (or at least, that whatever desert grasses have would not be the same as those of cacti, and that convergent evolution would be evident from any recent evolutionary convergences), and one would naturally predict a designer to design desert grasses for their environments, not to mimic grasses in cool wet regions (IDists don't predict this, solely because they'd be immediately falsified).

And here's another link that covers only one aspect of where Casey's linked site goes so very wrong:

As usual, Casey only attacks evolutionary theory, he doesn't support design or creation at all. Furthermore, he's faulting evolution over punctuated equilibrium, when the real proponents of punctuated equilibrium recognize the familiar evidences of non-teleological evolution to be compelling. Casey writes:

--Another study, "Evolutionary Explosions and the Phylogenetic Fuse," found a bird (as well as a mammal) "Early Tertiary 'explosion'" because many bird and mammal groups appear in a short time period lacking immediately recognizable ancestral forms.--

This appears to be a deliberate, or very ignorant, confusion of what is meant by "explosion" in those contexts. Not even the "Cambrian Explosion" is as Casey characterizes it, but I'll concede that it's still an issue, no matter that evolution during the Cambrian is evident and chordates do not appear at the beginning. Birds and mammals do radiate rapidly at times, particularly after the Cretaceous, but that's all we see, rapid evolution. We do not see novelty appearing, as one might expect from ID.

--34 Finally, others have called the origin of our own genus Homo, "a genetic revolution"35 where "no australopithecine [ape] species is obviously transitional"35 leading one commentator to call it, like others called the Cambrian Explosion, a "big bang theory" of human evolution.--

Again the twisting of what is meant by "explosion" there. Certainly the evolution of H. sapiens from H. erectus is well accepted by scientists, and australopithecines have no obvious reason to exist at all except as part of a hominin adaptive radiation, whether or not any are our direct ancestor. Indeed, why do IDists suppose that australopithecines, were "designed", only to go extinct? It's an answer that Casey, like the others, never gives to us.

--36 While these papers appeal to adapative radiation, niche-filling, and "genetic revolutions" as the mechanisms for these explosions, the pattern of rapid appearance of diverse morphologies without transitions remains an important pattern in the fossil record.

Conclusion: Out of thousands of species in the fossil record, only a few are claimed to be transitional forms. This lack of transitional forms poses, as Darwin said, "the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against [evolutionary] theory."1 And, at least to this point, it appears to be an objection that is unsolved by evolutionists. --

Casey seems not even to know what punctuated equilibrium is meant to answer, which is the problem of speciation. There are in fact very many transitionals identified in the fossil record (he's just wrong about that), and all vertebrate classes have at least one intermediate form extant in the fossil record.

As far as Casey's quote mining of Darwin goes, Darwin went on from the "gravest objection" to give a number of possible reasons why intermediates to the species were not found (as it was at that time, not at the present).

More importantly, Casey has utterly failed to explain why transitional fossils like Archaeopteryx are in fact "poorly designed" compared to modern birds, just as non-teleological evolutionary theory predicts (that's the short version of how we even know that they are transitional), and ID would not.

And frankly, that's enough. For anyone with an honest desire to learn, those alone answer so much of what IDists claim, and show up how pathetic their little apologetics pieces actually are. More importantly, I've shown by finding responses to almost every one of Casey's links on the web that the responses are out there, so that anyone can find them. Casey just doesn't acknowledged that, far from being censored, ID has been exposed for the sham that it is, and IDists simply link the same quote mining and worthless argumentation no matter how many times they have been answered.

And I repeat that virtually everything written by the DI and Casey merely attacks current science, it rarely even purports to produce any evidence for ID, and never comes close to presenting any legitimate evidence that organisms have been designed. Indeed, if they had that, they'd have answered the two posts that I pointed out have gone begging for answers from the IDists, post #389 and post #1031. They have no answers, so that even if #1031 was posted after Casey had written the comment that I have responded to here, it's safe to say that it hasn't been answered properly and won't be merely because IDists have no answers, not because of any "censorship".

I'll only respond further to Casey's closing paragraph:

--I do not have time to make any further posts on this blog thread--

And still you've written dozens, if not more, posts on the internet which have failed to give any evidence for ID. I'd think you could answer our questions, if you had any answers to our questions.

--but I hope that some of these links are helpful to you all in your discussions.--

They are not. I posted several which are helpful, and which are generally written by actual scientists, not lawyers like Luskin (he does have degrees in earth science, reportedly, not, however, in biology).

--Thanks and I hope all will do their best to keep the discussion here friendly and civil!--

Yes, IDists always want us to "be civil" as they attack science with the most worthless bilge, quote mines, and frequent false claims. We have answered them, they continue to avoid telling us how ID can account for different patterns of evolution in prokaryotes vs. those in eukaryotes, and why vertebrate wings are modifications of legs, not designs from first principles or even modifications of good wings (posts #389 & #1031 respectively). Furthermore, they almost always do nothing but attack science, while refusing to make even the obvious design predictions expected (because they know that they'd fail), and never providing any evidence of rational thought behind the "designs" of organisms. Rational thought is more than a little evident in nearly all of human creations, and would be expected from alien designs as well (if aliens do not produce rational signals and tools, we likely could never detect their designs). It's God (or "the designer") alone which is supposed to design without anything actually appearing to be designed, or to be techne, as the Greeks called it.